


Filled with terror and forgotten dreams.

by fate_incomplete



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:37:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fate_incomplete/pseuds/fate_incomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was nothing left to give that the darkness hadn't already taken. It had ripped all he held dear from him, left everything to drift in forgotten, tattered remains where none would ever see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filled with terror and forgotten dreams.

A scream reverberated through empty space, raw, throbbing with pain that could find no other voice. The sound swallowed by the void of all the things that were gone, lost, beyond the reach of fingers that never truly had a grasp on them, no matter the strength of desire to clutch at them and never let go.

Darkness consumed everything that was good, leaving nothing but inky blackness.

Another scream tore through the emptiness, ending in choked silence at tears that wouldn't fall. There was no point in tears. There was nothing left to give that the darkness hadn't already taken. It had ripped all he held dear from him, left everything to drift in forgotten, tattered remains where none would ever see.

No hope, no laughter. Nothing left to hold close, or look at in wonder. No warmth remaining to ease the coldness that reached in and wrapped itself around his bones. There was just the vacuum left by the absence of everything he had known.

Terrified. Alone. Left lost and broken, like forgotten dreams of all there could be.

He wanted to shift, irritated by the memory of sound that haunted, tormented him. He wanted to shred that remembrance of what no longer existed with his bare hands, to unleash the dark, burning anger he kept in check. Yet there was nothing to grab hold of, to fight, just a memory.

He curled in on himself as the sound relentlessly pounded in his head. It clawed at his mind, ebbing and flowing with the resonance of a million voices screaming as one. Amidst the overwhelming pain that was igniting every nerve ending with screaming fire, emerged a single voice from the cacophony.

He thought it a trick, some new deranged cruelty to shatter what was left of his mind, but he couldn't help letting it take hold of him, to drink in the soothing coolness of it against the inferno.

"Doctor," that voice whispered to him.

He grounded himself in it. Felt a crack form in the darkness as he tethered himself to that voice. Let it pull him through the darkness until in ran from him like water, leaving him gasping in lungs full of air as his body remembered how to breath, how to feel.

The Doctor felt hands on his shoulders, squeezing intermittently as if unsure what to do, afraid to let go, or hold too tight.

"Doctor?" The voice whispered again, closer, and very much real.

He opened his eyes to see Jack staring down at him, face drawn with a terrifying swirl of emotion that could drown him if he let it.

The room was dark, but for a weak pulse of light coming from beneath the console.

"What happened?" The Doctor asked as he struggled to stand, head still throbbing, but from a laceration to his temple, rather than the forgotten reverberation of millions of voices.

"We were, pulled, thrown, out of the vortex," Jack answered, hands still hovering around the Doctor, waiting to steady him, to pull him close, or push him away. The Doctor wasn't sure, maybe Jack wasn't either.

The Doctor's vision blurred as he looked below to the weak pulse of light. The TARDIS' engines had failed he remembered, though he didn't know why. They were drifting in the void between stars. He shivered at the thought of the empty blackness outside, before shrugging it off. Stubbornly pushing aside the lingering darkness and letting in only the beauty of impossible possibilities drifting in between the stars.

He closed his eyes, fighting off the waves of nausea from his concussion. Beside him he felt Jack shift, hesitate, before making some sort of decision. Jack's arm slipped around his waist, supporting him as he wavered on his feet. The Doctor gave up thinking and simply leant into Jack, taking whatever was being offered behind that simple, complicated gesture.

Sometimes, between the stars, in the dark places filled with terror and forgotten dreams, you could find what you weren't looking for.


End file.
